Seeking to strike a balance between construction needs and environmental concerns while allowing sand mining in states, the Union environment ministry on Wednesday came out with detailed "guidelines on sustainable sand mining" in the country and proposed strict monitoring and crackdown against illegal mining that has been rampant in many states.

The draft guidelines, which will help states in devising fresh monitoring mechanism, also suggest increasing penalty against the illegal miners which may include confiscation of vehicles carrying illegally mined sand, recovering huge amount (five to 10 times of the market value of the seized minerals) and seizures of all the equipments or machineries involved in mining in non-leased areas..............Read more

Source web page: Times of India